


grace and mercy

by meritmut



Series: i loved you well, when we were young [13]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Avengers. Loki is brought home to face justice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	grace and mercy

His forehead bleeds, and it’s the first thing she notices when they bring him home. Not the scrapes on his black garb, nor how his hair hangs lank and unwashed and inches longer for the year since she last looked upon him. Not even the unsteady mist in his eyes, as though his very thoughts struggle to coalesce in his head and only the firm presence of his brother at his side keeps him from collapsing. His brother, and some tattered vestigial pride.

No, those things she notices later. When Sif first lays her eyes Loki after he and Thor return from Midgard - one a bound captive, the other a victorious hero - with the Allfather’s long-lost Tesseract, for a split second she sees only the minor injuries that mar his once-smooth skin. Sees them, and wishes herself fearless enough to go forth and tend to them.

The irrationality of that desire dumbfounds her. Loki is not the man she knew. This creature, brought home from a murderous campaign of lunacy across Yggdrasil and beyond, is so far removed from the prince she’d last seen preening as Asgard’s one-day king, that he might be a different entity entirely.

And isn’t he? Since then, has he not been utterly and heartbreakingly transformed from Loki Oðinsson, beloved of his family and as blind to it as he was perceptive in all other things, into this unfamiliar spectre of his former self?

Laufeysson. Farbautijarson. Jötunn.  
_  
Loki._

The planes of his sallow-skinned face are harder, sharper than before, but Sif has mapped those lines too often in the flickering darkness of Asgard’s cosmic night to lose herself in his unfamiliarity contours. If she were to run her fingers across his still-elegant features, she would know him blind.

He spares her only a fleeting glance, contempt and disdain evident in his haunted eyes even as his gaze slides over her and onto Sigyn, where she is sure it softens slightly. She stares straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge him - because if she does, she will go to him.

She knows he thinks her an enemy, a traitor. But she is not so disloyal that she would forsake him so cruelly.

She is not Loki. She never has been, never will be. It’s why he loved her once.

Silently Sif thanks fortune that Sigyn grips her hand so tightly, keeping her rooted to the spot as the Einherjar escort Loki past. Her feet itch to fly, to take her to him because in this moment more than a few short feet divide them and she has a word or two for him that can stay no longer bolted behind her false composure. Her anger has festered over the past year and now she has a cankerous well of resentment to show for her calm appearance, a well she would see drained before its poison overflows.

In her mind she curses him. Strikes him. Behind her carefully-maintained mask of indifference and judgment, she rails and she snarls and she tears into him so vengefully that the wounds he sustained on Midgard become as the bites of an insect beside the savagery of a red wolf’s maw. Uninhibited, unrestrained, in her mind the two of them are mere breaths apart and she can taste his blood on her own tongue because in the darkest recess of her most secret thoughts Sif is kissing him, heedless of the crowds and the cuts and the wrongness of it all.

Her kisses are punishment as much as passion, possessive and brutal and ruthless. Loki left once, forswore Asgard and forsook his life there, but now he is back and lives by Oðin’s grace.

Sif has no such grace, and she will show no such mercy.

With a curse she will leave those dark daydreams behind and storm towards him across Gladsheimr’s ringing floor.

She will reach up to seize the frail skull by the straggling hair that clings darkly to ice-white skin stretched taut and cadaverous across sharp cheekbones, cracked and dry about that cruel muzzle. In the sight of gods and warriors she will draw the Liesmith close, and he will dip his head that she can touch her lips upon the vicious iron of the muzzle.

Tenderly now she will cradle his head, near lose herself in the pounding of her own heartbeat as his hands come up to grip her waist.

He will never let her go, and standing at Sigyn’s side Sif knows that for precisely that reason, she will never go to him. She will never break the ranks and lay her claim on his shattered being. She will keep her eyes level as they escort him past, and if he looks at her again, she won’t see it. Won’t be tempted.

Won’t be lost.


End file.
